NEW YORK -- Mafia kingpin Joseph 'Joe Bananas' Bonanno claimed Sunday he was kidnapped in a power grab by his cousin in 1964, but was released unharmed six weeks later because of the threat of retaliation.
Bonanno said his cousin, Stefano Magaddino -- who controlled the Mafia 'family' that dominated organized crime from the Ohio Valley, through Buffalo and upstate New York into Canada -- engineered his kidnapping from a street corner on New York's Park Avenue.
Bonanno made the accusation in an interview with Mike Wallace on Sunday's CBS-TV '60 Minutes' program. An earlier portion of the interview, in which Bonanno described himself as a 'man of honor' who never became involved with drugs or murder, was aired last month.
In Sunday's interview, Bonanno also:
-Made an unsubstantiated claim that Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the late President John F. Kennedy, was involved in bootlegging and was a 'partner' of gangster Frank Costello. The Kennedy family denied the charge.
-Claimed he never met underworld informant Joseph Valachi, but described Valachi as 'filthy.'
-Said he liked Marlon Brando's portrayal of 'The Godfather' in the movies, because Brando showed the Sicilian spirit.
There has been speculation for years among law enforcement agencies that Magaddino engineered Bonanno's kidnapping for various reasons - either as an agent for all the nation's crime families or in an attempt to strengthen his own power base.
Bonanno had just returned from dinner on Oct. 21, 1964, when two gunmen snatched him from the presence of his lawyer, William Power Maloney, as the two emerged from a car.
'Who kidnapped you back in 1964?' Wallace asked during the interview taped at Bonanno's home in Tucson, Ariz.
'My dear cousin,' Bonanno replied. 'That can happen.'
Bonanno identified the cousin as Magaddino.
What was Bonanno's reaction?
'This is it,' Bonanno said.
Bonanno told Wallace that Magaddino, who since has died, wanted him 'out of the way so that he could take over the Bonanno family.' But Bonanno was released unharmed six weeks later, 'for many reasons.'
'Maybe he didn't want my blood on his conscience,' Bonanno said. 'Maybe the retaliation from my people, from New York they will go to, to Buffalo because they weren't afraid of him.'
In all, Bonanno dropped from sight for 19 months. He told Wallace that after Magaddino released him, he was afraid another Mafia boss might try to kill him or that there might be another attempt to kidnap him. So he spent the time in hiding -- in South America, in Sicily, 'all over the world' before reappearing at a U.S. District Courthouse in Brooklyn.
Bonanno's son, Bill, also interviewed on the program, said the FBI knew Bonanno was alive and negotiated with him 'for months to bring my father in.'
'They kept wanting more and more,' Bill Bonanno said. 'First it was that he was to surrender. Then they wanted to arrest him in a restaurant. Then they wanted to have him show up at the FBI headquarters, all for publicity purposes.'
Joe Bonanno insisted he never 'saw Joe Valachi in my life,' despite Valachi's claims on nationwide television during U.S. Senate crime hearings that, 'Joe Bonanno happened to be my godfather.'
'He never saw my face,' Bonanno said. 'He was filthy of the bottom of the level of this supposed-to-be-Mafia.'
Bonanno told Wallace it wasn't only mobsters who got rich from bootlegging in the days of Prohibition.
'Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger,' Bonanno said. 'He made a lot of money. He was a partner of Frank Costello.'
Wallace said a spokesman for the Kennedy family, Steve Smith, denied both that Kennedy was a bootlegger and that he was a partner of Costello.
On Brando, Bonanno said the actor portrayed 'the feeling of the family.'
'I came from the family Bonanno who has a great tradition in Sicily and I came here with honor,' Bonanno told Wallace.
